Chocolate peanut butter cookies and Winter recipes

I’ve hit a bit of a wall recently. All I want to do in my spare time is hide under the covers, binge on Netflix series and eat delicious things.

Generally I would have no issue being the person who makes said delicious things, but these past few weeks I haven’t been getting very far. I played around with a delicious earl grey and orange blossom water layer cake (recipe still in the works) and I’ve made litres and litres of soup. I’ve also been really into breakfast smoothies.

The soup and smoothies are testament to how much of a hermit I am recently. I don’t need to expend much energy making them, and all I need to do is blend up assorted food lying around the house.

But no baked goods!

I have to say, these chocolatey, peanut butter swirled cookies helped a little. They were super simple to throw together and they addressed an urgent need of mine – to eat a bunch of peanut butter and chocolate to get back to baking.

They’re simple little morsels that I can guarantee I will be making time and time again this winter.You should too! I’ve made two batches since finalising the recipe (two batches in a week!) and I have zero regrets. They’re chunky, flavoursome, just sweet enough, and they’re a great size. Big enough that you can eat just one, not too big that people will judge if you go back for seconds.

Just look at it. It’s so bumpy and mottled that you know it’s going to be delicious.

Make them. Now.

What are you waiting for?

Peanut butter stuffed chocolate cookies

3/4 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

115g butter

1/3 cup cocoa

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp bicarb

1 1/2 cups plain flour

2 tsp milk

80g milk chocolate, chopped

Grab your peanut butter and a length of cling wrap. Spread the peanut butter over the cling so that you have a thin slab. Wrap it up and pop in the freezer for half an hour.

After the peanut butter has frozen, take it out of the freezer and chop into cubes of about 1cm, then return them to the freezer.

Cream together your brown sugar and butter, then mix in the cocoa, egg and vanilla. Add in the bicarb and plain flour, then the milk and finally the chocolate.

Preheat your oven to 180°C and line a tray with baking paper.

Roll your dough into 16 balls and then flatten them gently into discs.

Grab your peanut butter chunks from the freezer and sprinkle them over half of your discs. Return the peanut butter chunks to the freezer so that they don’t melt while you work on the first batch. Grab your dough discs and fold the dough over the peanut butter pieces and in on itself until you have a ball of dough and the peanut butter is mottled throughout. Press pieces of chocolate into the mixture as you go.

Grab the remaining peanut butter pieces from the freezer and repeat the process with the remaining dough discs.